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Yamaha XG (EXtended General MIDI) is an extension to the General MIDI standard, created by Yamaha. It is similar in purpose to the Roland GS standard.
Relative to General MIDI, XG gained popularity by increasing the number of available instruments from 128 to 480 (361 in some interpretations) with additional 11 drum kit sounds, and introduced a large set of standard controllers and parameters that composers could employ to achieve greater subtlety and realism in their compositions. The XG also has a synthesizer that provides a 32/64 note polyphonic feature which is shared through the supported 16 MIDI channels. XG has a wide range of sounds to form such complex chords and produces a vast variety of lower synthesizer sounds to choose from.
In 1994, Yamaha released the first XG-based product: Yamaha MU80 Tone Generator. In 1995, Yamaha released the first XG-based product for PC users, the DB50XG daughterboard, a Creative Wave Blaster competitor. In 1996, Yamaha released MU10 external module, basically, a DB50XG in a case and later the SW60XG ISA PC card and the DB51XG a smaller version of the DB50XG daughterboard. Coupled with their tone generator, these devices included an onboard 4MB sound bank chip of sampled instruments and became highly desirable among MIDI fans due to their crisp, high-quality sounds similar to the newer models of Roland Sound Canvas [ citation needed ]. These devices feature an effects processing system with individual stereo reverb and chorus effects on any of 16 channels, the ability to route any of the channels through an additional 'insertion' effect, and even guitar amp and wah-wah pedal simulations. Yamaha's in-house songwriters often utilized these tools to demonstrate the power of the XG format, notably recreating Jimi Hendrix leads complete with feedback, flamenco guitar with distinct pick/hammered notes and finger slides, growling saxophones, and even a very convincing sitar .
The DB50XG, DB51XG, SW60XG and SW1000XG are all discontinued.
The SW1000XG was popular in the professional music industry, and many of Yamaha's amateur and professional keyboards implement either XG or a subset, known as "XGlite". Many notebooks include the Yamaha YMF7xx chipset which has a scaled-down XG-compatible MIDI synth. The DB60XG, a DB50XG with an analog input, is available only in Japan. .Most XG standard tone generators can switch itself into TG300B mode, which is an emulation of the competing Roland GS standard that allows adequate playback of musical data bearing the GS logo.
The XG-compatible Yamaha S-YXG50 SoftSynthesizer, which is discontinued, is an entirely software-based MIDI synth. It used a 2 MB or 4 MB wavetable sound set, and was common among non-professional users who needed a cheap, high-quality MIDI synthesizer for purposes such as playing games that rely on MIDI to produce music and sound effects.
Korg, due to its close relationship with Yamaha, released three instruments with XG compatibility:
Korg was the only manufacturer outside of Yamaha to produce XG-certified instruments.
MIDI is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music.
Digital music technology encompasses digital instruments, computers, electronic effects units, software, or digital audio equipment by a performer, composer, sound engineer, DJ, or record producer to produce, perform or record music. The term refers to electronic devices, instruments, computer hardware, and software used in performance, playback, recording, composition, mixing, analysis, and editing of music.
Digital waveguide synthesis is the synthesis of audio using a digital waveguide. Digital waveguides are efficient computational models for physical media through which acoustic waves propagate. For this reason, digital waveguides constitute a major part of most modern physical modeling synthesizers.
The Roland D-50 is a synthesizer produced by Roland and released in April 1987. Its features include subtractive synthesis, on-board effects, a joystick for data manipulation, and an analogue synthesis-styled layout design. The external Roland PG-1000 (1987–1990) programmer could also be attached to the D-50 for more complex manipulation of its sounds. It was also produced in a rack-mount variant design, the D-550 (1987–1990), with almost 450 user-adjustable parameters.
SoundFont is a brand name that collectively refers to a file format and associated technology that uses sample-based synthesis to play MIDI files. It was first used on the Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card for its General MIDI support.
There have been various families of Yamaha audio controllers labelled as YMF7xx.
The Yamaha Motif is a series of music workstation synthesizers, first released by Yamaha Corporation in August 2001. The Motif replaced the EX series in Yamaha's line-up and was also based on the early Yamaha S series. Other workstations in the same class are the Korg Kronos and the Roland Fantom G. The series' successor is Yamaha Montage.
A clonewheel organ is an electronic musical instrument that emulates the sound of the electromechanical tonewheel-based organs formerly manufactured by Hammond from the 1930s to the 1970s. Clonewheel organs generate sounds using solid-state circuitry or computer chips, rather than with heavy mechanical tonewheels, making clonewheel organs much lighter-weight and smaller than vintage Hammonds, and easier to transport to live performances and recording sessions.
A wind controller, sometimes referred to as a wind synthesizer, is an electronic wind instrument. It is usually a MIDI controller associated with one or more music synthesizers. Wind controllers are most commonly played and fingered like a woodwind instrument, usually the saxophone, with the next most common being brass fingering, particularly the trumpet. Models have been produced that play and finger like other acoustic instruments such as the recorder or the tin whistle. The most common form of wind controller uses electronic sensors to convert fingering, breath pressure, bite pressure, finger pressure, and other gesture or action information into control signals that affect musical sounds. The control signals or MIDI messages generated by the wind controller are used to control internal or external devices such as analog synthesizers or MIDI-compatible synthesizers, synth modules, softsynths, sequencers, or even non-instruments such as lighting systems.
The Roland SC-55 is a GS MIDI sound module released in 1991 by Roland. The SC-55 was the first sound module to incorporate the new General MIDI standard. It was the first in the Roland Sound Canvas series.
Roland GS, or just GS, sometimes expanded as General Standard or General Sound, is a MIDI specification. It requires that all GS-compatible equipment must meet a certain set of features and it documents interpretations of some MIDI commands and bytes sequences, thus defining instrument tones, controllers for sound effects, etc.
The Korg Wavestation is a vector synthesis synthesizer first produced in the early 1990s and later re-released as a software synthesizer in 2004. Its primary innovation was Wave Sequencing, a method of multi-timbral sound generation in which different PCM waveform data are played successively, resulting in continuously evolving sounds. The Wavestation's "Advanced Vector Synthesis" sound architecture resembled early vector synths such as the Sequential Circuits Prophet VS.
The Sound Blaster AWE32 is an ISA sound card from Creative Technology. It is an expansion board for PCs and is part of the Sound Blaster family of products. The Sound Blaster AWE32, introduced in March 1994, was a near full-length ISA sound card, measuring 14 inches (356 mm) in length, due to the number of features included.
The Yamaha MU-series is a line of sound modules built by Yamaha. All sound modules except MU5 support Yamaha XG. The sound modules were commonly used when computers had slower processors. The computer could send MIDI commands to the sound module, acting as an external sound generation device. Later MU sound modules feature A/D inputs that allow direct input from microphones and guitars.
The Wave Blaster was an add-on MIDI-synthesizer for Creative Sound Blaster 16 and Sound Blaster AWE32 family of PC soundcards. It was a sample-based synthesis General MIDI compliant synthesizer. For General MIDI scores, the Wave Blaster's wavetable-engine produced more realistic instrumental music than the SB16's onboard Yamaha-OPL3.
The Roland ED SC-8850 is a GS-compatible MIDI sound module released in 1999 by Roland under the name RolandED. The SC-8850 was the first sound module to incorporate the new General MIDI Level 2 standard. The SC-8850 uses a PCM sampling engine based on that of the SC-88 Pro, and supports 128-voice polyphony with 64-part multitimbrality. It came preloaded with the soundsets of all older Sound Canvas models, as well as the CM-32 and MT-32. Aimed at personal computer users, the SC-8850 features 1,703 instrument patches, including the GS sounds and additional GM2 sounds. The selection of effects includes reverb, chorus, and Roland's own Insertion EFX, which adds effects like vibrato, distortion, tremolo, etc.
The history of home keyboards lies in mechanical musical instrument keyboards, electrified keyboards and 1960s and 1970s synthesizer technologies.